George Borrow

“ Lovers of George Borrow are wont to claim that he is one of the choicest of bedside comrades. Mr. Birrell, indeed, stoutly maintains that slumber, healthy and calm, follows the reading of his books just as it follows a brisk walk or rattling drive. "A single chapter of Borrow is air and exercise." Neither need we be very wide awake when we skim over his pages. He can be read with half-closed eyes, and we feel his stir and animation pleasantly from without, just as we feel the motion of a carriage when we are heavy with sleep. ”

“ Borrow always struck me as a dear old creature. When Borrow married her she was a widow with one daughter, Henrietta Clarke. The old lady used to dress in black silk. She had little silver-grey corkscrew curls down the side of her face; and she wore a lace cap with a mauve ribbon on top, quite in the Early Victorian style. I remember that on one occasion when she and Miss Clarke had come to Brunswick House they were talking with my mother in the temporary absence of George Borrow, who, so far as I can recall, had gone into another room to discuss business with John Pilgrim. ”

“ When he became a country squire and the author of the very successful Bible in Spain Borrow frequently visited London, and his various residences may be traced from his letters. Take, for example, these five notes to his wife, the first apparently written in 1848, but all undated:
To Mrs. George Borrow
Tuesday afternoon.
My dear Wife,—I just write you a line to tell you that I am tolerably well as I hope you are. Every thing is in confusion abroad. The French King has disappeared and will probably never be heard of, though they are expecting him in England. Funds are down nearly to eighty. ”

“ But these tributes were not all-satisfying to an ambitious man, and this Borrow undoubtedly was. His Russian journey was followed by five weeks of idleness in Norwich varied by the one excitement of attending a Bible meeting at Oulton with the Reverend Francis Cunningham in the chair, when “Mr. George Borrow from Russia” [110] made one of the usual conventional missionary speeches, Mary Clarke’s brother, Breame Skepper, being also among the orators. Borrow begged for more work from the Society. ”

“ The criss-cross experiences of his boyhood, together with his mixed Cornish and Gallic heredity, were elements that very largely helped to create the whimsical character of George Borrow. We have now come to the time when the old soldier, with his pension of eight shillings a day, and his excellent and devoted wife, settled with their two sons at the little house in Willow Lane, Norwich. ”

“ Whilst at Sandgate Mrs Borrow became acquainted with John Murray, the son of the founder of the publishing house from which, forty-four years later, were to be published the books of her second son, then unborn. The widow of John Murray the First had married in 1795 Lieutenant Henry Paget of the West Norfolk Militia. Years later (27th March 1843) George Borrow wrote to John Murray, Junr., third of the line:
“I am at present in Norwich with my mother, who has been ill, but is now, thank God, recovering fast. ”

“ I turned away, and never saw Isopel Berners again.”
This little book, concerned chiefly with Norwich, cannot follow the wayfarings of Borrow, so enchantingly described in “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” in chapters which justify to the full Mr. Birrell’s enthusiastic admiration when he wrote: “The delightful, the bewitching, the never sufficiently to be praised George Borrow—Borrow, the Friend of Man, at whose bidding lassitude and languor strike their tents and flee; and health and spirits, adventure and human comradeship, take up the reins of life, whistle to the horses and away you go!” ”

“ Fifteen years before, the same “tall athletic gentleman” had called a dozen times at 50a Albemarle Street with translations of Northern and Welsh ballads, but “never could see Glorious John.” Borrow had determined to make another attempt to see John Murray, and this time he was successful. He submitted the manuscript of The Zincali, which Murray sent to Richard Ford [335b] that he might pronounce upon it and its possibilities. “I have made acquaintance,” Ford wrote to H. U. Addington, 14th Jan. 1841, “with an extraordinary fellow, George Borrow, who went out to Spain to convert the gypsies. ”

“ Shaw said that “George Borrow never did a worse service to humanity than by writing ‘Lavengro,’ with its glorification of vagabond life.” Though one cannot acquit Borrow of inconsistency, we must remember that “The Gypsies of Spain” was written in 1840, and that he sent a notice of it to Mr. Brandram of the Bible Society in March of that year, ending his letter with the words: “I hope yet to die in the cause of my Redeemer.” ”

“ No woman whose cleverness had not reached the point of inspiration could have lived in intimate association with so capricious and masterful a man as George Borrow. John Hasfeldt, in sending his congratulations, had seemed to suggest that Borrow was one of those abstruse works of nature that require close and constant study. ”

“ It might with impunity suppress a Society; but in George Borrow it soon became evident that the officials had to deal with a man of purpose and determination who used a British Minister as a two-edged sword. Borrow was invited to call at the Asiatic Department: he did so, and learned that if permission were granted, Mr Lipovzoff (who was a clerk in the Department) was to be censor (over his own translation!) and Borrow editor. There was still the “If.” Borrow waited a fortnight, then called on Mr Bligh. By great good chance Mr Bludoff was dining that evening with the British Minister. ”

“ I remember Borrow very distinctly, because he was fond of chatting with the boys, who used to gather round the railings of his garden, and occasionally he would ask one or two of them to have tea with him. I have a faint recollection that he gave us some of our first notions of chess, but I am not sure of this. I . . . remember him a tall, spare, dark-complexioned man, usually dressed in black. In person he was not unlike another Norwich man, who obtained in those days a very different notoriety from that which now belongs to Borrow’s name. I mean John Thurtell, who murdered Mr Weare. ”

“ Nature it appeared had framed Borrow in a moment of magnificence, and, lest he should be enticed away from her, had instilled into his soul a hatred of all things artificial and at variance with her august decrees. He was shy and suspicious with the men and women who regulated their lives by the narrow standards of civilisation and decorum; but with the children of the tents and the vagrants of the wayside he was a single-minded man, eager to learn the lore of the open air. ”

“ Borrow created something of a sensation in the neighbourhood. As a celebrity his autograph was much sought after; but he would gratify nobody. His hosts experienced many little surprises from their guest’s strange ways. He would plunge into a moorland pool to fetch a bird that had fallen to his gun, or, round the family fireside, he would shout his ballads of the North, at one time alarming his audience by seizing a carving-knife and brandishing it about in the air to emphasize the passionate nature of his song. ”

“ Oh what a source of trouble that wretched fellow Pilgrim has been both to you and me.
I wish very much to come up to London. But I cannot leave the country under present circumstances. There is not a person in these parts in whom I can place the slightest confidence. I must inform you that at our interview F. said not a word about the matter in Chancery. God bless you. Kind remembrances to Dr. M.
George Borrow.
To Mrs. MacOubrey
Dear Henrietta,—I wish to know how you are. I shall shortly send a cheque for thirteen pounds, which I believe will settle the interest account up to Michaelmas. ”

“ Even for one so prone to hate both books and bookmen there was always the wind on the heath, the gypsy encampment, the now famous “broad,” not then the haunt of innumerable trippers. But Borrow ever loved wandering more than writing. Almost immediately after his marriage—in 1840—he hinted to the Bible Society of a journey to China; a year later, in June, 1841, he suggested to Lord Clarendon that Lord Palmerston might give him a consulship: he consulted Hasfeld as to a possible livelihood in Berlin, and Ford as to travel in Africa. ”

“ Life and Letters. See vol. ii. p. 24, where Charlotte Brontë writes: “In George Borrow’s works I found a wild fascination, a vivid graphic power of description, a fresh originality, an athletic simplicity, which give them a stamp of their own.”
[269b] Theodore Watts-Dunton, Augustine Birrell and Francis Hindes Groome. Lionel Johnson’s essay on Borrow is the more valuable in its enthusiasm in that it was written by a Roman Catholic. Writing in the Outlook (1st April, 1899) he said:
“What the four books mean and are to their lovers is upon this sort. ”

“ Two, they say, are company and three are none; two men could ride in a gig for sixty miles without much difficulty, and an odd man often spoils sport. At any rate, they left me out, and one day they came back full of malignant pride and joy and exultation, and they flourished their information before me with boastings and laughter at my ferocious jealousy; for they had seen, and talked with, and eaten and drunk with, and sat at the feet of the veritable George Borrow, and had grasped his mighty hand. ”

“ I cannot help thinking that it is a great cruelty to keep people so long in so horrid a situation; it is two years nearly since he has been condemned. Do not be anxious if you do not hear from me regularly for some time. There is no escort post in the countries to which I am going. God bless my mother, yourself, and Hen.
G. B.
To Mrs. George Borrow, Oulton, Lowestoft
Hermanstadt, July 30, 1844.
My dearest Carreta,—I write to you a line or two from this place; it is close upon the frontier of Wallachia. ”

“ The extraordinary thing, indeed, is the many points of likeness between Borrow and Bowring. Both were remarkable linguists; both had spent some time in Spain and Russia; both had found themselves in foreign prisons. They were alike associated in some measure with Norwich—Bowring through friendship with Taylor—and I might go on to many other points of likeness or of contrast. It is natural, therefore, that the penniless Borrow should have welcomed acquaintance with the more prosperous scholar. ”

“ In his letters to John Murray, Borrow not only refers to the book as his Life, but from time to time gives crumbs of information concerning its progress. The Secretary of the Bible Society has just lent him his letters from Russia, “which will be of great assistance in the Life, as I shall work them up as I did those relating to Spain. The first volume,” he continues, “will be devoted to England entirely, and my pursuits and adventures in early life.” He recognises that he must be careful of the reputation that he has earned. ”

“ The pursuits and society of his youth scarcely could be denominated, in Troloppian euphemism, la crême de la crême; but they stood him in good stead; then and there was he trained for the encounter of Spain . . . whilst sowing his wild oats, he became passionately fond of horseflesh. . . .
“How much has Mr. Borrow yet to remember, yet to tell! let him not delay. His has been a life, one day of which is more crowded than is the fourscore-year vegetation of a squire or alderman. . . . Everything seems sealed on a memory, wax to receive and marble to retain. He is not subjective. ”

“ John Murray, whose virtues, both as publisher and as English gentleman, he was never tired of extolling.
Afterwards he went down to East Anglia—that East Anglia he loved so well—went there, as he told me, to die.
But it was not till one day in 1881 that Borrow achieved, in the Cottage by the Oulton Broads which his genius once made famous, and where so much of his best work had been written, the soul’s great conquest over its fleshly trammels, the conquest we call death, but which he believed to be life. His body was laid by the side of that of his wife at Brompton. ”

“ Throughout his whole life George Borrow adored his mother, who seems to have developed into a woman of great strength of character far remote from the pretty play-actor who won the heart of a young soldier at East Dereham in the last years of the eighteenth century. ”

“ Knapp expresses himself as much terrified by the invasion of the free path by “a party rushing madly up, striving to keep pace with a mettlesome steed . . . at the sight of whose enormous hoofs and shaggy fetlocks you are all but ready to perish.” Such niggling super refinement would be quite repugnant to Borrow’s highway robustious temperament. ”

“ The criticism is just, but Borrow, in common with many other great English authors whose work will live, was not uniformly a good stylist. He has many lamentable fallings away from the ideals of the stylist. But he will, by virtue of a wonderful individuality, outlive many a good stylist. His four great books are immortal, and one of them is Wild Wales.
We have a glimpse of FitzGerald in the following letter in my possession, by the friend who had introduced him to Borrow, William Bodham Donne:
To George Borrow, Esq. ”

“ In this memoir we have a capital glimpse of our hero:
Among the notables whom he had met was Borrow, whose Lavengro and Romany Rye he afterwards reviewed in 1857 under the title of “Roving Life in England.” Their interview was characteristic of both. Borrow was just then very sore with his snarling critics, and on some one mentioning that Elwin was a quartering reviewer, he said, “Sir, I wish you a better employment.” Then hastily changing the subject he called out, “What party are you in the Church—Tractarian, Moderate, or Evangelical? I am happy to say I am the old High.” ”